Talk & Book Signing | Petra R. Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Díaz with Bad Bunny Collaborators

About the Event

What is it like to collaborate creatively with Bad Bunny, and how has his global superstardom influenced political activism around Puerto Rico? At this talk, the authors of new the book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance explore his impact with the star’s collaborators, including music video director Kacho López Mari.

About the Speakers

Kacho López Mari is a Puerto Rican filmmaker and music video director, and cofounder of Filmes Zapatero. Over the past two decades, his work has helped shape the visual evolution of reggaetón and contemporary Latin pop, from early, genre-defining videos like Tego Calderón’s “Abayarde/Gracias” and Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina,” to landmark collaborations with Bad Bunny including “Callaíta,” the documentary-hybrid “El Apagón: Aquí Vive Gente,” and “Baile Inolvidable.”

His work has been recognized across both awards and festivals. In 2014, López Mari made history as the first director to win both the Latin Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video and Best Long Form Music Video in the same year, for Calle 13’s “Ojos Color Sol” and Juanes’s “Loco de Amor (La Historia).” He is a seven-time Latin Grammy nominee and two-time winner.

Festival accolades have followed throughout the years. In 2019, “Elintelné” by Trending Tropics was nominated for Best Concept at the Berlin Music Video Awards; in 2022, “Flow HP” was selected for competition at the Bogotá Music Video Festival and won Best Urban Video at the Buenos Aires Music Video Fest; and in 2023, “El Apagón: Aquí Vive Gente” won at the Video Prisma Awards (BAMV Fest) in the Documentary category, while “Canción Desaparecida” received an award for Social Impact and was a finalist at Videoclipe Latam in the m-v-f- Awards (Brazil Music Video Festival).

His recent work continues to earn major international recognition: “El Apagón: Aquí Vive Gente” was shortlisted at Cannes Lions and nominated at the MTV VMAs (Video for Good), while “Baile Inolvidable” received a 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards nomination for Best Music Video and a 2025 MTV VMA nomination in the Best Latin category. The Los Angeles Times has described his catalog as a time capsule of modern Latin music history.

Vanessa Díaz is a multimedia ethnographer and journalist whose work focuses on issues of race, gender, and labor in popular culture across the Americas. She is the author of Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke, 2020) and director of the bilingual documentary film Cuban HipHop: Desde el Principio (2006). She has published as a journalist in such outlets as the Washington Post, USA Today, Latina, Rolling Stone, and People magazine. At LMU she teaches the course “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico,” which has been featured by many media outlets and even Bad Bunny himself discussed the course on Jimmy Fallon.

Petra Rivera-Rideau is Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies at Wellesley College. Petra’s research explores race, popular music, Puerto Rico, and Latinx identities. She is the author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico and Fitness Fiesta! Selling Latinx Culture through Zumba, all with Duke University Press. She is coeditor of Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. She has also written for popular media outlets like LA Times, Washington Post, and Latina. She has served as a consultant on several reggaetón projects, including Bad Bunny’s 2023 Coachella headlining set.

Together, Petra and Vanessa coauthored the book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke, 2026) and cocreated the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project.